


come on (let somebody love you)

by from



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gift Fic, Gift Giving, M/M, Memory Loss, Uninformed Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 16:58:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9558509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: Niall wakes up thinking Harry is his boyfriend and Harry runs with it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shipreally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipreally/gifts).



> for [ever-so-brave](http://ever-so-brave.tumblr.com/), who so generously donated to [msf/doctors without borders](http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/). thank you, lane!
> 
> a million thanks to [openhearts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts) and [littlecather](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlecather) for all their help
> 
> please see the end notes for more on consent in this fic. i am also [fromward](http://fromward.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

_I wanna feel your weight on me_

It’s the sexting. On top of everything else, Niall is really, really good at sexting. 

That’s why his phone went off every minute of every damn day on tour, Harry knows now. That’s also why pretending to be his boyfriend whilst staying on moral dry-to-boggy land is really, really hard.

Harry has no idea how much more of it he can take. He’s the type to jump into deep water, after all. But Niall’s just confused and if it weren’t for Harry’s own stupidity, the confusion might have been sorted by now. 

_You’ve got the wrong Harry Styles_ , he wants to text back every time. _I’m the one you had no interest in_

His dick might have a hard time listening (ha!), but his heart knows. He doesn’t get to have Niall like that, not in any of the ways he didn’t have him before. 

_I wanna feel us heavy together like we’re on the sun_

“I was in a meeting,” Harry admonishes when he walks into Niall’s cold kitchen to Niall grinning at him. “And we’d be four tonnes on the sun. I looked it up.”

There are white boxes on the long kitchen island, their tissue paper spilling out. Harry feels himself being pulled toward them. Because. Clothes.

“New stuff from your stylist?”

“Yep,” Niall says, sounding so close.

Right behind him, in fact.

Harry shivers, trying to keep his eyes from looking down to his waist, where he can feel Niall’s warm hands moving to grab hold of him, Niall’s chest feeling solid against his back.

“Missed you.”

“Yeah,” Harry croaks, thinking of months and months of mostly being out of each other’s orbits only to suddenly end up like this. “I missed you too.”

“Want to go upstairs?” Niall whispers, voice low.

“I don’t—” He’s running out of excuses and really, there should be some sort of red button he can stamp his foot on so the people meant to run interference can rush in. “Isn’t Chris coming over soon?”

Niall nuzzles his neck, inhaling deeply, his rough beard grazing skin. Harry’s dick is slowly getting hard enough to fly a white flag on and a part of him thinks, _Fuck it_. Fuck everything. Let’s have a bit of fun.

“Hooh boy that traffic is _murder_ ,” Willie hollers, striding in.

Niall unhitches himself from Harry’s back with a shameless chuckle and Harry sidles out of the kitchen quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid seeing Willie cast him a death glare.

It’s uncalled for, especially coming from Willie, who directly contributed to the debacle with his literal taking of things. Besides, Harry is doing his best. He hasn’t touched Niall any more than he used to. There’s no taking advantage of anyone here.

“You can say, ‘Doctor’s orders,’ Harry. That should keep him out of your pants. Niall’s good at listening to doctors.” _Unlike some people_ , Maura’s eyes silently added two days ago when they met up for a quick tête-à-tête. 

He didn’t try to defend himself. She was there when the band played Dublin and he was on the good painkillers because he’d rather wear Saint Laurent at the Irish shows than the ugly space boot for his broken foot. 

What he did say, and immediately wished he hadn’t, was, “Niall knows only yes means yes, Maura.”

Because then she said, gleefully, “Well, be careful. Wear protection.” 

He, scandalised to the tips of his upturned coat collar, only nodded and got in his car to go freak out at home.

Next time, he thought as he sped away and in many philosophical moments since, the next time someone asked him if he was dating Niall, he’d check first to see if the answer actually mattered.

When Willie spoke to him the week before, Harry wasn’t even aware that Niall was in hospital. He’d been admitted after his cousins had found him unconscious in his home office with a nasty bump on his head.

Niall had woken up on the journey to A&E, where the doctors had said they’d like to keep him upstairs overnight but that he’d seemed fine. Then Niall told Willie to give Harry a call and when Willie asked what message needed passing on, Niall said, “Tell him he’s a shit boyfriend for not rushing to my deathbed.”

Harry still doesn’t know why Willie didn’t take it as Niall trying to lighten the mood since that’s always what Niall does when he’s not well. Instead, Willie rang and asked gravely, “Are you and Niall seeing each other? Because he seems to think the two of you are boyfriends.”

There was nothing to do but joke about it since the words had sunk punches into his chest. “He hasn’t told you? We’re deeply in love,” Harry said, not knowing it would mean so much, what with the doctors waiting to find out if they’d caught a symptom of head trauma. 

Then came the strange afternoon at the hospital, his hand held in Niall’s when none of the staff was around. Harry mostly stared at Niall, wondering which part of his brain found Harry good enough to be a boyfriend and if, perhaps, he should be a little bit insulted it took a knock to the head for that part to activate. 

“It’s not true,” he confessed to Maura in the hallway. “We should tell him it’s not true.”

“I thought as much. He’d never cheat on you,” she said. And Harry was deeply curious about the people she knew Niall had slept with, but. Not his business. Not actually Niall’s boyfriend.

The doctors weren’t happy with him. Neither was Willie, who took the last packet of gummi bears from the vending machine and wouldn’t share.

They kept Niall in the hospital for a few more days, but nothing else seemed to be wrong with him.

“Maybe there’s nothing at all wrong with him,” Harry muttered on the phone from LA. “Can’t you let him out? The longer he’s in there, the greater the chance the press will find out.” There was a lot of official chirping on the other end until he said, “You know, sooner or later, he’ll chuck me and we’ll all be back to where we were.” 

Ethically dubious but a crowd pleaser. That’ll be on his epitaph one day.

Since Niall came home and Harry flew back into London, they’ve spent twenty hours so far hanging out together. No signs of Niall wanting to chuck him yet. Many more signs of Niall wanting to get in his pants. It’s lucky Harry has been able to use the perfectly honest excuse of needing to be in meetings and catching up with other people to get some distance and keep his head in order.

Niall isn’t the type to want to be joined at the hip but the problem with being apart, again, is that Niall is really good at sexting. It’s much better for Harry’s sanity to be in the same room with him, preferably with Niall not having access to his phone.

Otherwise, he’d be sitting like he is right now, on the other side of the coffee table, sending Harry weirdly hot close-ups of his hand clamping down on his inner thigh, wrist limned by the shadow of his open zipper. Harry hopes Willie wasn’t still in the kitchen when Niall took them. They’re almost as bad as the ones from yesterday of his hairy armpit, the soft skin over the muscle of his chest looking damp.

“You’re not meant to do anything that’s going to excite you,” Harry scolds, grabbing a pillow to hug and possibly hide how his trousers are getting a bit tight again. He needs to get on to the new secret group chat, remind everyone he’s very new to this fake boyfriend lark so could someone please hurry up and save him. They’re not terribly understanding, this lot.

“I’m not getting excited. How can I? You’re not sending me anything to get excited about,” Niall says easily, crossing over to sit on the sofa. “I remember your sexting game was better than this,” he adds, and lays his head down on the pillow across Harry’s lap.

“Heyyyy.” Niall’s head is heavy and his soft, scruffy face is too close for comfort. “It’s not a game,” Harry tells him. “It never is.”

Niall’s eyes go fuzzy for a moment before he quickly blinks and snickers loudly, “Right.”

Harry stares at Niall’s eyes, clear now and so fucking blue, his own heart beating faster. “Um,” he says, alarmed. He hopes it isn’t getting worse. “How are you feeling?”

Niall pulls up a sports site on his phone and sighs, scrolling down on some stats. “Can you rub my head, please?”

Harry does as asked even though giving Niall head rubs used to get a bit much for him. Partly because it meant fighting through Lou’s postmodernist hair moussing but mostly because it felt like with each pass of Niall’s hair in between his fingers, he had less and less air to breathe.

“Ow, Harry. Mind the bump.”

Harry fixes the pillow under Niall’s shoulders and neck. It makes tending carefully to Niall’s head easier, the bump cushioned and away from Harry’s hand.

To think people would say he’s the demanding one in the band.

He stays another half hour and goes up to Mum’s. She and Robin are in Italy, but Gemma is housesitting for them and it’s really his sister he wants to see.

Over two bottles of Burgundy and a packet of yam crisps, he tells her what’s going on. She’s making appropriate sympathetic noises until he confesses he doesn’t know how much longer he can manage the not-having-sex bit.

“Oh my god,” she groans. “All those weird pics of Niall you took on tour, the ones you said were like, you practicing fashion photography or whatever—That was me seeing your wank bank and you lying to protect my innocence!”

“No it wasn’t!”

Scurrilous slander, he mutters when he’s scaling the staircase to go sleep in his old room. He never took photos of Niall to wank to them.

Sometimes he just liked the way the light in the studio would hit Niall’s arms when they’re waiting around before soundcheck, the way the glare of Niall’s phone screen made his face look like it was underwater, how his freckles in black and white were little open mouths.

That was ages ago anyway, he tells himself, and no one ever captioned the pics with things like _I like it when you’re watchin me_ or _Tell you how they feel when you come over_. 

Coffee only hurts more the next day. He spends what’s left of the morning outdoors and the afternoon with Gemma, clearing up the shed as a birthday gift to Robin.

“I didn’t mean you were being a perv,” she says when they’ve stopped shrieking themselves hoarse emptying old seed packets down each other’s backs. “Last night. That’s not what I meant.”

“Good to know,” he sniffs.

“Oh stop it,” she says, wiping the gardening bench, the dried up critters flying off her duster and falling onto the floor. “His brain’s doing things he has no control over. Can you blame it for knowing how to speak to yours?”

He’s glad she has her back turned toward him. She’s too clever for him sometimes. 

“I’m spending Friday night at his,” he says, grabbing the broom so he can start pushing all the dead and the rubbish outside. “I sort of promised before I left.”

“No way,” she twirls and giggles, flipping her hair dramatically. “Are you guys finally going to do it?”

“I came up here for advice, not mockery!”

+

“Can I say something?” Gemma asks when he calls her from the carpark at the services, looking for his notebook and thinking it might still be by his bed at Anne’s.

“What?”

“It kind of pissed me off, that they’re letting you go through with one of your hare-brained schemes.”

“Excuse m—”

“But I believe in you and I know you mean well. You always do,” she says, shutting him up. “That said, I am worried for you. In case it goes badly, try not to lie to him too much?”

Harry stares at the cars slowly pulling in and out of the petrol station. “Yeah. I know. Thanks,” he tells her, and slips out of his new 4x4. “Did you find the notebook?” 

Niall is still at a pub with his mates when Harry gets to his empty house. He can’t decide if he’s annoyed or relieved. He watches an old American rom-com on Netflix until Niall texts him that he’s on his way. 

He has to rush to get everything sorted but by the time Niall gets home, he’s under the covers with a book, his phone, a hot water bottle, and two magazines, one about guitars and the other one about golf. It makes a nice distracting spread in the middle of Niall’s bed.

“Is there room for me in there?”

“Picked these up for you on the drive down.” He holds up the hot water bottle, “And this is for your knee. You said it’s been bothering you.”

Niall dips his head, smiling. “Thank you.” Harry smiles back and Niall holds his gaze for a moment before letting out a soft sleepy noise. “All right. I’m gonna go brush my teeth. Surprised you’re still up, to be honest. Didn’t expect the match to go into overtime. Sorry about that,” he says, and disappears into the bathroom.

Harry tries lying on his back, an open book in his hands. But it feels like he’s blocking Niall off in Niall’s own bed. He tries lying on his side, facing away. Maybe Niall can spoon him if he wants because it’s nice when—No. He should lie facing in. Be welcoming. This is about Niall, not himself.

When Niall finally gets in bed, he reaches over all the stuff Harry brought, puts his hand on Harry’s chest, and leaves it there, half his body lying over everything.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Not really,” Niall murmurs, smiling with his eyes closed. “But I’m dead tired and maybe a little drunk. A bit of you is better than nothing.”

Harry swallows and puts his book down. “The light’s still on.”

“Aren’t you still reading?”

“No. I’m—I’m tired too.”

He starts putting the book and magazines away, sets his phone on the shelf closest to the bed, Niall’s fist still curled loosely by his side. It takes four tries to switch off the light, with Niall laughing softly behind him.

Hot water bottle in hand, Harry moves closer to Niall, who lies back and leaves his arm open wide so Harry can tuck himself into the crook of his shoulder.

He feels for Niall’s knee and places the wool-covered bottle by it. He doesn’t know what to do with his hand afterward but it still fits around Niall’s waist, like it used to when they were lonely enough and small enough to share a bunk on the tour bus.

“You’re a top class boyfriend, Harry,” Niall says, his voice already thick with sleep. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Harry presses his face into Niall’s chest, chews his lip so he doesn’t say a thing before he can close his eyes and fall asleep believing.

He wakes up alone, his dick half hard, his hand idly stroking it before he remembers where he is. He thinks about waiting for it to calm down before getting out of the covers, but Niall breezes through the door in his gym clothes and startles him into sitting up.

“Leemo’s here,” Niall says, dropping a kiss on his forehead. “I’m going for a run. The knee’s happy this morning.”

Harry goes downstairs and finds Liam in the small office by the living room, sitting at Niall’s desk with an open greeting card in his hand, a harassed look on his face.

“Maybe you shouldn’t’ve bought him so many gifts,” Liam says, glancing up. 

“Good morning to you too, Liam,” Harry drawls. He knows Liam hates it when he does, but he hates it when Liam criticises him. Probably because he also knows Liam is a good person. “You look very nice, but I’ve no idea what you’re referring to.”

Liam gestures to the wooden box in front of him. It’s filled with gift notes and cards. “Niall was covered in this stuff when they found him, apparently. Must’ve been grabbing the box from up there when he got hurt.”

Harry looks up at the floor-to-ceiling shelving, sees the gouged veneer on the topmost shelf, and knows exactly what happened. Niall plus a swivel chair never ends well.

“‘You like stripes and I like boys like you. H.’”

“What?” Harry spins, flushing.

Liam takes that as a cue to repeat his reading aloud of Things. No. One. But. Niall. Should. Read.

Harry remembers writing the note to go with the striped Comme des Garçons shirt he picked up for Niall last December. It was meant to be funny, what with the pun and everything. “It was a t-shirt. I was giving him a t-shirt. With a pun. On the brand. Which he loves.”

Liam ignores him, already with another card in his hand, “This one’s nice. ‘Welcome to LA. Can’t wait to hear your own Yesterday. Love, H.’”

“That—I was giving him a guitar. Because he needed one,” he explains, hoping Liam won’t bring up the other dozen hung up around the house. “In LA,” he adds, just in case.

“The Epiphone Texan,” Liam says. “I remember. He loves that guitar. Good gift.”

Harry would prefer it if Liam stopped rifling through the box, but the guitar _was_ a good gift. “Is there more?” He clears his throat. “I mean, there must be other people’s cards and notes in there.”

“‘Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time? These were three for twenty quid. Somebody who loves you’.”

Liam’s face is a thinking, frowning thing now, but he’s likely getting it wrong. Unlike Niall, _whose eyes the card was meant for, Liam_ , he doesn’t know his classic rock.

“This is your handwriting,” he unexpectedly says, flapping the card at Harry. 

It’s the one Harry picked up at a stall outside St Mary’s, the day after he got back from the Caribbean. He thought Niall would like the plain red rose on the front.

“Don’t deny it.”

“I’m not denying it. Why should I? They were great socks. Practically free at that price.”

“Harry. ‘Somebody who loves you’?”

“I was quoting an Eagles song!” he squawks and rescues the card from Liam’s rock heathen hands. “Desperado,” he adds with the gravity and respect a classic deserves.

“Well. Must be a love song.”

“Wrong,” Harry tells him. “And these aren’t all from me,” he adds, resisting the urge to flick through the rest as he puts the card back in the box. It’s not his stuff. It’s not Liam’s either.

“No, not all. Just under half, it looks like.” Liam sighs. “If this box isn’t the smoking gun, I don’t know what is.”

“Hold on,” Harry protests. “Liam, are you playing detective this morning? You were meant to come over for breakfast to rescue me, not arrest me.”

Liam rolls his eyes. “You don’t need rescuing or arresting,” he says blandly. “But the doctors need to know about this. Maybe it’s psychological, know what I mean?”

Harry knows exactly what Liam means and what Liam means is based off of cherry-picked evidence. “There must be stuff in there from like, Selena and um, people in Mullingar and like, Ellie and probably half of Chicago and—” Harry pauses, feeling like he’s sounding a bit bitter and there’s no reason to be. “Barbara. They were a thing. He liked her. He definitely liked Selena. Probably still loves her, really.”

“Notice how you’ve only brought up the people he’s dated?”

“He never dated Ellie.”

Liam is blinking like he’s got a stress tic. It must be jet lag. Someone else should’ve been assigned the morning shift. “He never dated you either, but for some reason, he thinks he has been. And the last thing he was looking at was probably this.” 

“So Niall’s sentimental and now we know,” Harry says, shrugging. “There’s probably stuff in there from his family too. Nana. Bobby. Maura. They probably wouldn’t appreciate having the doctors read their private messages.” He stares at Liam witheringly and adds, “I know I wouldn’t.”

“You’ve got a point,” Liam says after his cheeks turn a penitent red. “But I am going to tell them what I found, Harry. He wouldn’t be keeping these if they didn’t mean anything to him.”

Harry knows how that’ll go. _Niall got loads of irresponsibly lovey-dovey notes from Harry and his brain’s taking it the wrong way._

“How about we do a tally?” he offers. “The ones from me were probably sitting at the top by chance. I did just give him that striped t-shirt, you know.”

Liam’s nostrils flare. He’s coming to some ridiculous conclusion, Harry can tell. 

“Oh fuck. What if he thinks you’re together because he wants you to be?”

Harry won’t entertain the thought. It’s just as ridiculous as the thought of having sex on the sun or of licking Niall’s armpits until the skin’s abraded and needs tending to with a cold compress and a distractingly good fuck. They can’t have those things. Niall likes his relationships simple, neat, well ordered. Harry is further toward the other end of the spectrum.

“Mate, you alright?”

He shakes his head, still not willing to entertain the thought. “He wants this Harry, the one who sent him these notes. The one who ended up being his boyfriend.” 

“That’s you though, ” Liam half asks, studying him up and down worriedly. 

They’re both quiet for a long while, with only Stevie’s voice punctuating the hum of Niall’s central heating. California in London, like someone folded a map of their world and put two ends together. That’s too close, really, for him.

“I’m not saying you’re right,” Harry starts, remembering that Niall could already be nearing the end of his run, “but maybe we shouldn’t keep doing this.”

Liam is blinking hard enough to stir a windmill when he says, “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

Harry gives the thought a solid twenty-four hours to settle into the more rational parts of his brain. That evening, Niall rubs his back when the jammy sponge he makes for the Horans’ family dinner ends up being gooey in the middle, and although the cousins were all there to glare at him, Harry curls in and lets himself enjoy it.

Niall walks him to his car after and pulls him into a protracted snogging session against the driver door. 

On the first day, Harry quickly learned how not to touch Niall too much, resting his hands on Niall’s back and waist the way he would if they were hugging just as friends. 

But there’s no helping the kisses, the tasting of Niall’s mouth as if he has a right to it. Niall’s lips are loud and warm, and it feels like they’re always on the edge of laughter. Harry wants to come up to that edge with him over and over, even when he’s running out of air.

“Sure you can’t stay? It feels like you want to,” Niall says easily, hips pitched against his.

“Doctor’s orders, Niall,” Harry repeats, pushing Niall off despite already wanting the weight of them together again. It’s easy, since they’re not on the sun.

+

Staring down his empty espresso cup the next morning, Harry wonders how he’ll manage. He isn’t Niall. He doesn’t stay friends with any of his exes. It’s a little different this time, he tells himself. They’re not actually together. Besides, if it’s Niall who breaks it off, he’ll probably keep to form and their friendship can survive.

Harry starts small. Everyone is grumpy on Mondays anyway.

“I hate kids.”

“No you don’t,” Niall says, not even looking up from his cereal. “You love kids.”

“Um.” Harry did spend hours with Lux just yesterday, but he doesn’t think Niall knows that. They were looking up elephants together and he showed her a video of a little one playing in the snow. “Yeah. Okay,” he admits, her laughter bright inside of him. “I really do.”

He waits to steal Niall’s last triangle of toast. When he does, Niall only snorts at him and passes him a napkin.

Niall puts away the dishes and Harry furtively pulls up Safari to reread Cosmo’s _Reasons Long Term Couples Break Up_. 

“The government should stop wasting money on the NHS,” he says, going for the next one on the list.

“Harry, you don’t believe that.”

“You’re right,” he frowns. “I don’t.”

“What’s going on?” Niall laughs. “You checking to see if I still remember what you’re like? You can stop now because I do, and I always will.”

Harry can hear a sudden screaming inside his heart. It’s noisy, and completely unacceptable behaviour for an organ. 

He runs off to yoga and inner peace, but not before Niall grabs him and gives him a tight hug that he declares to be extremely annoying; Niall only laughs again.

Fresh and fortified, Harry makes another attempt the next day. He leaves the studio early to mill around the kitchen whilst Niall is making lunch. He gets somewhat distracted by Niall’s good coffee and a conversation about producers in LA until Niall pinks at a compliment and he remembers he’s meant to be causing the opposite.

“That’s very oily,” he says, commenting on the oil in the roasting pan.

“There’s gonna be veg in that. I’m not putting it in the oven as is,” Niall says. “It’s called roasted vegetables for a reason.”

“Well. Loads of veg, I hope,” Harry sniffs.

“Go on, you, get out of here. Come back in an hour.”

It’s irritating how easy-going Niall can be. Harry marches upstairs and makes a mess of his walk-in, scrambles the clothes, tries on his perfectly steamed t-shirts one by one, tight as a hug around the shoulders. He hangs them back wrinkled and stinking of his own cologne. It won’t make Niall fly off the handle, but it’ll sour his mood.

Lunch looks delicious and Niall’s face is ruddy from the heat of the kitchen, his temples and the insides of his elbows shiny.

Harry sits down next to him, takes a deep breath, and grabs the first opportunity he sees. “That’s a lot of pepper.”

Niall stops turning the crank on the pepper grinder. “Can everyone in the world stop telling me what to put in my food?”

“’M only thinking of your acid reflux, Niall.”

Niall makes a frustrated noise, methodically chomps his food without any conversation, and leaves the kitchen.

On tour, whenever Niall disappeared in a huff, Harry wouldn’t see him again for ages. But he’s back ten minutes later with his guitar and Harry clears up to his soft, jangly version of hit radio. It reminds him of times when he’d be off on his own at a venue before a show and Niall would look for him, play him a few songs on the guitar, just the two of them staring at what they could glimpse of the view outside.

Harry doesn’t like to cry, but sometimes life can be rather challenging. 

He retreats into the recording studio, chases up a couple of songwriting invites, and quietly ignores Niall’s sexts and texts. Unreliability, Cosmo did tell him, is one of the reasons long term couples break up.

Of course, that’s when Louis decides to come back to London. There’s nothing for Harry to do but pull himself together and try harder.

Louis takes Harry aside after a few days of watching him pick blazingly stupid arguments with Niall, the last one having ended not five minutes ago with Niall shoving Harry’s things at him the way he used to in hotels all over the world when they’d pile up in his room.

“Are you trying to make him chuck you?”

Harry nods.

Louis tips his head, a curious look on his face. “You sure it’s the way you want to handle this?”

Harry thinks of Niall shut up in his bedroom and asks, “It’s working, isn’t it?”

“Honestly can’t say, but you know what, I think it’s at least reminding him how you can be a complete arse sometimes,” Louis says, grinning.

“That’s cruel,” Harry categorises aloud and goes to the living room to find a nice record to play.

Being in London this winter was meant to be relaxing.

“Why can’t you just be honest with him, lay everything out?” Louis comes in asking. “Say what needs saying, before it’s too late.”

Louis’ eyes are warm and Harry wants to tuck his head into the crook of Louis’ neck and find some comfort there, but he’s meant to be showing some competence at life, not be too needy. Besides, Louis already has a lot on his plate. 

Harry vaults the sofa and marches for the swivel chair in the office to do some swivelling to Stevie. Alone.

Of course, two songs later, Liam has to poke his head in. Harry feels sad looking at his face. Liam likes confrontation about as much as Harry does, which is to say, not at all.

Harry shifts his gaze to the mostly empty push pin board on the wall. There’s a consultation notice from the council, a postcard with a photo of a bullring on it, and a drycleaner’s price list. It’s cheaper to get a coat dry cleaned in Niall’s neighbourhood than in his. He should’ve taken advantage of that.

Liam comes over, phone in hand, and nudges his leg. “Do you have an exit plan?” he asks when Harry looks up. “When it’s over. What’re you gonna do?”

“Why are you here? Don’t you have your own business to mind?” is what ten-year-old Harry would’ve said. But it’s 2017, he’s almost twenty-three, and they still have a history of getting through things together.

So he says, “I will survive. But thank you for your concern, Liam.”

Niall will let him down easy. He’ll be apologetic but cheerful and warm. He might even cook Harry a meal or two whilst they’re both still in town. All will be fine until the day Harry realises, after months of dwindling texts and snaps, that Niall has affably removed himself from Harry’s life. Because Harry’s right about one thing. It’s a little different this time, for the both of them.

He can see that future now, the ugly dreariness of it.

He doesn’t want it.

He won’t let it happen.

“Maybe riling him up isn’t the best thing to do,” he says, getting up, an idea forming in his head. “The doctors said it could be stress-related, didn’t they? The bad acid reflux and now this. Could be the album release getting to him.”

Liam is nodding. “I can tell you that’s—”

“What he needs, Liam, is to de-stress. Get away. Find himself again.”

“Find—”

“I’m taking him away, Liam.”

“You’re what? I thought you’re putting a stop—”

“I’m taking him on holiday.”

“To where?”

He doesn’t know yet, but for the sake of looking like he does, he grabs the postcard, losing the push pin as it flies off but no matter, and brandishes the bullring at Liam. “To Spain, of course.”

“Spain?” Liam asks, muffled because he has his hands up over his whole face. But Liam has beautiful enunciation, everyone always says that.

Niall asks exactly the same thing when Harry tells him he’s booked them a week’s holiday in Andalucía.

“I found a spot. Completely private. But it’s a quick flight and a shortish drive so if you need your doctors, we’d be fine.”

There’s a soft look in Niall’s eyes when he says, “We’ve never gone on holiday together before.”

“Come on,” Harry says, resting his arm on Niall’s shoulder to touch his face, bring him in. “Let’s go.”

+

The plains of southern Spain, Harry finds out, are freezing in winter.

He’s trudging in the dark behind Niall, the rental car and its empty petrol tank left behind at the edge of the farming estate. The building he can make out in the distance is only backlit but he recognises the high walls that featured in the property photos. At least they’re finally at the right place, Harry tells himself, even though it’s a cold slog through the orchards and on foot. 

“You remembered the keys, didn’t you?” Niall shouts over his shoulder for the third time.

“Yes,” Harry shouts back. The envelope they picked up in Seville hours ago from the rental agency is safe in his holdall, which he’s valiantly shouldering through the wind along with the guitar, in case Niall is forgetting.

“All right! I’m only asking. We’ve walked almost a mile now. I don’t want to have to go back for them.”

Harry pulls open the bag as he’s walking. Might as well pass them to Niall to calm him down a bit.

That’s when he hears the splash.

“Fuck!” Niall gasps like his whole chest is empty of air. “Fucking hell!”

“Shit! Niall!” Harry throws off his bag and dumps the guitar case on top. “You okay? Niall?” He trains the phone at the ground, carefully stepping forward, and gets hit by a spray of icy water, the soft smell of chlorine following.

“Fuck no!” 

Niall sounds angry. 

Harry hopes he’s not terribly hurt and drops down to the edge to look for him. The light from his phone catches a hand and he grabs it, keeping himself low on the ground so he doesn’t get pulled in. “I’ve got you,” he shouts, and shouts again. 

Niall is a good swimmer but he’s fighting the shock and the biting cold. Harry stays rooted as he climbs out, teeth chattering. 

“D-did you say there’s a pool?” Niall says in between deep, pained breaths.

Harry giggles out of relief more than anything else and helps him peel off his sodden backpack. He can’t help it when he hears Niall shiver. He kisses his wet temple and pulls him close, feeling the freezing water soak through his own clothes, chilling his bones. “Fucking hell, Niall. You’re shaking. Are you alright?”

A grim look crosses Niall’s face when their eyes meet. “Just t-tell me you have the keys.”

“I have the keys,” Harry assures him, hugging him tighter and rushing him toward the house.

They have to go all the way around to get to the massive outer door, but it’s at least lit by a row of lamps hung high on the wall. So is the bricked inner courtyard, where Harry starts rushing along the porticoes, looking for a door he can unlock, his own clothes clinging to him in icy strips where they’d met Niall’s, their gear feeling unbearably heavy on his shoulders. 

Having a whole place to explore, just the two of them, is the sort of thing Niall likes. It was the only reason Harry told the agency he didn’t want anyone meeting them at the property. Stupid now. So stupid. But at the time, it seemed the perfect start to a week of wooing Niall before laying out the truth, telling him everything, before asking if Niall might, possibly, consider sticking it out with him. 

“Harry! C-calm down!”

“You’ll thank me when you don’t catch pneumonia,” he shouts across the way.

“Th-that’s not how you catch pneumonia, ee-eejit. A-and come back. This one’s not locked.”

“We need to start a fire,” he says when they get inside.

Niall lets out a gasping laugh. “How about a h-h-hot shower?”

Harry stops midway to the fireplace and turns back, sheepish. “Alright. But, you know, a fire later.” 

They climb up the staircase and Harry finds them the enormous walk-in shower of the master bath. He tells Niall to get out of his clothes and goes to turn it on, shucking his own boots and coat. 

Not all of the jets and showerheads are coming on even as the bathroom starts to fill up with steam. He strips down to his boxer briefs and gets in. 

He glances back, bits of him slowly warming up under the sprays as he’s fiddling with the taps, and sees Niall just standing there half-naked as if he’s finally frozen cold.

“What are you doing?” he shouts.

They used to look up the most random shit, Niall, him, and Zayn. He doesn’t remember it all, but hypothermia probably comes with disorientation.

“Get in,” he says, pulling Niall into the steaming shower.

It takes a while for Niall to stop shivering, still in his socks, pants, and undershirt.

Harry wants to hold him, help him get warm, but Niall seems like he’s off in his own planet, like he almost doesn’t want Harry to be here, seeing him this way.

Niall is proud, Harry knows. 

But he also just got a dunking in a freezing swimming pool.

“Harry. I have three jets hitting me right now. I’m well sorted,” Niall says, pushing away the handheld spray Harry is training at his chest. 

“You need warming up.”

“But not another drowning,” Niall snaps. He peels off his sodden t-shirt, balling and tossing it onto the seating area against the wall.

Harry steps back at the loud smack of the shirt hitting the tiles and uses the spray on himself, quiet and not at all sulkily, to banish the chill along his shoulders and massage them a bit. He studiously ignores the sounds of Niall taking off the rest of his clothes.

When he finally glances over, Niall has turned around, his head bowed under the main spray, his hands on the tiled wall. His beautiful freckled back is starting to pink, but it’s still rigid, as if he’s not done steeling himself against the cold.

It doesn’t seem right to not do a thing about it. 

Harry hangs up the handheld spray, wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and steps closer. 

When he starts rubbing Niall’s shoulders and arms, a groan filters through the wash of water all around them.

“Feels good,” Niall murmurs thickly, as if he’s making a confession.

Harry rests his forehead on the nape of Niall’s neck, thinking, it’s not a lie that they want to sleep with each other, so why not, and why not now? 

Slowly, he reaches around to hold Niall by the waist, their bodies not quite flush together but touching.

“Harry.”

He moves his hand lower, over Niall’s belly and the trail down to the wet thatch of hair.

“Harry,” Niall’s hand bites his. 

“What?”

Niall turns around, breaking their embrace, an uneasy smile on his face. “What you doing?”

“We’re already naked,” Harry explains.

“That simple, is it?” he says, chuckling. But he doesn’t sound happy. “I’m not meant to get excited, remember?”

“You’ve already had an accidental ice bath, Niall. What level of excitement are you expecting out of this?” Harry sincerely wants to know. “It’s sex, not space flight.”

Niall shakes his head, exasperated maybe, but also amused. “Good to know there’s no false advertising with you.”

“You already know the goods,” Harry says, leering as much as one can possibly leer through steam and spray.

“You’re not goods.”

He looks away, his heart beating fast. Niall’s voice was perfectly flat when he said it, but his eyes flashed with a kind of fury.

“You’re a person.”

He doesn’t know it’s happening until he’s looking down at their bodies, locking like puzzle pieces, his forehead resting on Niall’s shoulder. “Yeah, but I meant, you already know the real me,” Harry tells his collarbone. 

Niall still has Harry’s hand in his grasp, his thumb making absentminded little strokes along the cushion of Harry’s palm. Never mind that their dicks are clearly showing interest. Harry feels it deep in his gut: Niall wants to be here, like this, with him.

“I’ve missed you,” Harry adds, since this isn’t meant to be their first time.

Niall’s breathing speeds up and Harry brings their hands up to his chest, waiting. 

“Yeah,” Niall finally whispers. “Me too.” 

He lets go of Harry’s hand only to clutch his arm, pull him in by the waist, tight. 

“Alright,” he says to Harry’s mouth. “Just sex. Not space flight.”

Harry tips his head and their lips meet, slick and soft from the water, Niall’s hands roaming along his shoulders gentle and warm, his tongue slipping in through Harry’s parted lips. It’s like slow dancing in the rain until Harry presses forward and he feels the bruising of their mouths and chests all the way down to his feet. 

He loves it, he loves kissing Niall, even if he’ll never admit to it and definitely never write it down.

“I’ve missed you,” he says again, because if he’s truly honest, he kept the thought out of his head for a year but he’s allowed to say it now, as much as he wants to. 

Niall pitches forward, scrabbling at his pants. _Oh._ “We need to get these off,” Niall says. But he peels them down only to the meat of Harry’s thighs and it feels like Harry is standing with a wet tight band around his legs, his balls still tucked up, heavy. 

“Let me—” Harry tries to lift his leg to get them off. Niall grips his thigh, stopping him, and palms his dick, taking it in his hand, slowly pumping. 

“Okay,” he says with a little whine. “Maybe—” 

“No. You let me,” Niall tells him, and lowers himself, mouthing Harry’s chest and stomach, taking little curled licks of Harry’s dick. 

The feel of Niall’s sweet tongue on him and the harsh rub of wet fabric down his legs makes his stomach clench. He reaches out for the wall, thinking he’s about to lose his mind and fall over as Niall pulls his pants all the way down, over his feet, and off.

Niall gets himself up slowly, running his hands along the backs of Harry’s legs. Harry giggles when it feels like Niall is climbing up him to get to standing, a hand on his outstretched arm, the other on his arse. 

“God, the things I want to do to you,” Niall says, slipping a finger lightly down his cleft, easy but with no warning. 

Harry grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him again. “Anything,” he offers. “Everything.” 

“Come here.” Niall pulls him toward the bench and makes him sit down, pushes him to lean back into the corner. 

They’re out of the reach of the sprays now, but everything is still wet from the steam and the tile is cool on his back and shoulders. 

His nipples ache from how tight they’ve got. He twists one for relief, hips twitching under Niall’s gaze. 

“Christ. Do you—” Niall closes his eyes for a moment and it’s guttural when he says, “I wish I could fuck you.” Harry is immediately on board and nodding, but Niall breaks into a reedy laugh. “No. None of that. Don’t have the energy to.” 

He puts a hand under Harry’s knee to bring his bent leg up onto the seat, scooting closer to him, his beautiful dick bobbing as he does. He lays feather soft kisses on Harry’s open thigh, feeling for Harry’s own dick.

Harry takes his hand and guides it, and then they’re both stroking him, their wet fingers meeting and bumping with each pull of hot skin. It’s almost too much at once, and Harry wishes Niall’s mouth was closer so they could be kissing. 

But Niall is mouthing up his leg, licking and biting, his hand gripping him from the back. He noses the hairless strip where Harry’s thighs rub against each other, licks into the pit between his balls and legs, sending shivers up them. 

His hand moves along and frees Harry’s balls with a couple of soft tugs. Harry holds a breath when they disappear into Niall’s mouth, hot and wet, Niall’s nose pressing into skin like there isn’t more he can take, his tongue doing little swirls, making Harry squirm and flush to the very ends of him, wanted. 

Harry tightens his grip on his own dick, edging them to go faster. Niall’s hand speeds up with his and Harry can feel it building, his breaths getting hoarse, his whole body straining hard. 

Niall frees him, pulling his hand away to grip Harry’s hip even as he’s licking harder down below, his shoulder digging into Harry’s thigh, and Harry thinks, maybe, maybe he could lift his other leg and Niall could get at his arse. He thinks, maybe he’d get to feel the rough heat of it, Niall’s tongue, Niall’s mouth touching him there.

He comes with a moan, pulsing all over his stomach, Niall’s hands rough on the vee above his thighs. He turns and presses his face into the tiled wall to have a moment’s relief and not fall too far. 

“Fucking hell,” he whispers, inhaling steam and the smell of himself, Niall’s breathing tight to his ears above the rushing sound of water.

“What about you?” he croaks, lifting his head, pushing with his shoulder off the wall. 

Niall’s eyes are hooded, his lips bruised red. 

“What can I do?”

“Let me look at you,” Niall says, stroking his dick, facing him but not really looking, not yet. 

Harry feels a flash of heat coursing through him, but he holds himself still, not knowing what’s too much to see and what’s not enough. 

“Clean yourself up.”

He nods, holding Niall’s hungry gaze. He picks up Niall’s balled up wet t-shirt and uses it to wipe himself down, rubbing it along his nipples, his stomach and groin. It feels good, rough and slick all at once. He lets Niall know this, lets him hear it. Niall twitches, his pupils blown, and Harry slows, using just an edge to clean his dick, the mess of hair and come. 

Niall drops sideways into Harry’s bent leg and kisses his knee roughly, his nose rubbing against the inside of Harry’s thigh. He tugs at his balls and Harry pulls himself up, wanting to do the same, to do it for Niall. But Niall stops his hand. 

“It’s good like this,” he says, fingers pressed into Harry’s wrist, one hand stroking harder along his thick dick, which Harry hasn’t had the chance to touch, to feel in his mouth. “I’m good,” Niall insists, and spills into his own hand, shuddering, his breaths like cries.

+

In daylight, the swimming pool is postcard blue, the bright winter sun tricking the eye into thinking the water is perfectly warm. Niall gives Harry a look every time they pass by it, seeming to say he still can’t believe what happened.

The only thing Niall brought to Spain that didn’t go in the water with him is his phone. They went to fish for it the morning after, solely to make sure no one else could try to salvage the data, but Niall had managed to fling it clear of the pool. 

It’s all a bit strange, really, how the phone has been sitting neglected on the kitchen counter ever since. It’s not that Harry expects Niall to keep up with social media and the like whilst they’re on holiday, but at Niall’s place, he would be on it every few minutes unless he was lost in the guitar. The phone has even stopped buzzing, probably because it’s sad and close to dying. 

Harry knows the feeling.

Niall hasn’t been ignoring him, not exactly. They’ve shared a bed every night, pressed close under the blankets. They’ve gone on bike rides around the orchards and taken long walks down to the rocky river bordering the estate. In the afternoons, after heavy lunches, they’ve lazed together in the house, Niall with his guitar or the sports on telly and him with a book. 

But there’s absolutely no more sex involved, not even after Niall visibly got a chub yesterday watching Harry keep up his Pilates routine. 

A tiny, noisy part of him wonders if it’s because he hasn’t quite lived up to the fantasy. 

“I see Spain has cured your sexting addiction,” Harry says to Niall on his way to a hot bath. If he sounds tetchy, it’s only because he has spent half the morning wandering around the house in his workout tights, cold. He cooked breakfast and ate in them, one leg tucked close against Niall’s. He lounged on the sofa in them, across the coffee table from Niall, replying to emails and texts whilst doing extra leg stretches. 

Never say he doesn’t make an effort.

In the afternoon, his phone pings with a message from Niall.

_It always feels like this when I’m with you_

The photo is of a sky lit up with stars. Niall probably stole it from the internet or one of his astronaut mates.

“You’re off your game,” Harry says to Niall, walking into the living room with nothing in his head except an annoyingly feverish need to see him. 

Niall shrugs and puts down the dog-eared copy of _Just Kids_. 

“Read it. I don’t mind,” Harry tells him.

“Just wondering what it was,” Niall says easily, grabbing the remote control for the telly as he settles into the couch.

They have a day and a half left, and they’re not getting any closer, any more in love, any less likely to fall apart.

Harry doesn’t know what else to do. 

“Tell me about how we got together.”

Niall gives him a quick, surprised glance. “You know how,” he chuckles.

“I like it when you tell it.”

“I dunno.” He runs his thumb over and over the remote control buttons but doesn’t actually turn the telly on. “I’m not good at that.”

Harry sits down next to him, stares at the endless rows of citrus trees outside, and wants to not tell lies anymore. But he says, “You are.”

Niall puts down the remote control. For a moment, Harry worries that he’s about to leave, but all Niall does is sit up and lean forward, elbows bent over his thighs.

He rubs his face before he says, “Alright. Well. I have eyes. Could always see how hot you were. You were weird, but that made you like, special hot.” 

“I sound like a pizza.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Niall laughs. “I like pizza.”

“Everyone likes pizza.”

Niall’s eyebrows twitch in agreement. “Well. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” he says. “Kept saying to myself, there’s no way things would end well and then I’d really be in for it. Get my heart broken. Have everything be shit at work.”

“Why—”

“But I loved you, didn’t I? And maybe, at the back of my mind, I always thought we’d get together somehow.” 

Harry’s heart skips. He wants to tell Niall he’s been thinking about it and he knows now he’d say the very same thing. But he needs to wait. Let Niall share his story first. 

Niall shakes his head, making a strangled noise. “I just couldn’t say it. Not to you.” He shakes his head again. “I still feel terrible about that. 'Cos sometimes I could feel it. I could tell you wanted me to.” 

“This story’s getting sad,” Harry tells him, feeling his own face heat up. He knocks his knee against Niall’s good one. “Jump to the part where you finally said it.”

Niall rolls his eyes at him, but there’s half a smile on his face. “You want to hear this or not?” he asks and doesn’t wait for Harry to answer. “Anyway, I had the clever idea that if we didn’t see each other, maybe I’d get the noise out of my head. Stop thinking about things so much.”

“Did it work?”

“Yep,” Niall says and Harry frowns.

“Except I still had _you_ in my head,” Niall adds. “Wrote a song about it, didn’t I?” 

In the silence, Harry’s brain starts to trumpet a warning. Maybe it’s the tremor in Niall’s voice or the way he’s holding himself, rigid, like he did against the cold their first night. Maybe it’s because Harry knows Niall wrote his single not even a year ago.

“But we never talked about that.” Niall swallows. “We don’t talk about it. All I had were your funny little notes and the guitar and—I kept thinking, what the fuck was I waiting for? How many albums was I gonna record with it before I had the guts to tell you how I really felt about you?”

Having a brain that only wants to speak in trumpet noises whenever walls are crumbling all round him is awful. “Niall. You never—”

“It’s too big to talk about, isn’t it? Me loving you and you loving me. It’s fucking terrifying.” Niall exhales, his eyes fixed on something out there, past the trees. “That’s why we never got together.”

“Wait, what?”

“I remembered.” Niall turns to look at him. “When I fell into that bloody pool and froze me arse off, I remembered.”

Harry draws a breath. He wasn’t expecting to be the one a step behind. It’s appalling. “You had sex with me under false pretences!”

“So did you!”

“N—Yes. Fine. I did,” he admits. “But I was going to tell you the truth.” He clears his throat. “Once I’d convinced you that you shouldn’t chuck me because I really am a great boyfriend.” Niall snorts and Harry legitimately cannot think why. “Except for the part about not being by your sickbed.”

“Deathbed.”

“You weren't dying!”

“Well. Could've been. Did we know? Existentially I probably was.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “I'm never letting you borrow Hesse again.”

“Didn't actually read it, if it's alright to say.” Niall chuckles, gazing down. “Not much of a reader, me. You know, I used to look at you, nose deep in your books, and think, ‘I could never talk to him about those.’” He groans and looks back up at Harry, cheeks tinged pink. “Christ, I sound like a kid in one of those teen dramas on BBC3.”

“But don’t you think we’ve done well together, Niall?” Harry asks, trying to get the conversation back on track even though what he really wants to do is kiss Niall for ages, eyes open, hands down each other’s pants. “We’re still doing well.”

“We have. Yep,” Niall agrees. 

Harry stares at him. Hard. 

“We are, I suppose.” 

Really hard. As hard as he can. 

“Christ, Harry,” Niall laughs. “No need to peel my skin off. Yes. We’re still doing well.”

“Then let’s keep going.”

“Harry. Come on.”

“You come on.”

Niall exhales. “We could never keep it up,” he says. “One day, one night, we'll get lonely and someone’ll be there who's not you or me.”

“Fine.” They’ve both been through it. No argument to be made there. “So get yourself away, send me a snap of you licking a table and I’ll call you back and you can like, watch me fuck myself,” Harry tells him, “You know, slicked up the way you’d be if you were there fucking me. Which you’re going to love. I promise.”

“Jesus, Harry,” Niall says, and turns to pull Harry close, land his clever, exasperated mouth on Harry’s shoulder, his neck, the bit of skin behind his ear. “Why would I lick a table?” he mutters.

“It rhymes with able, and cable, and fable, and ga—”

To Harry’s disappointment, Niall never licks any furniture for him. Not even as a thoughtful anniversary present. Niall says it’s because Harry keeps him busy licking other things. Harry disagrees. But no matter. It’s a very mild disappointment.

“Tell me how we got together,” Harry whispers to him one afternoon, on a plane bound for the ARIAs, the sun feathering the clouds with gold.

“Short version, long version?” Niall asks, pushing his phone away. 

Harry puts an arm around his shoulders and curls in. “Start with the bit about me loving you and you loving me.”

~

**Author's Note:**

> the plot revolves around niall being unaware that he and harry aren’t actually in a relationship. many scenes involving physical and emotional intimacy may present as containing dubious consent issues, specifically uninformed consent. please take care.


End file.
